Word: portishead
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Nonblack performers are increasingly drawing from rap. Beck expertly combined folk and hip-hop. Hanson's hit MMMBop included deejay scratching. Portishead refashioned hip-hop into ethereal trip-hop. Singer Beth Orton, whose enchantingly moody album Central Reservation is due out in March, blends folksy guitars with samples and beats. Doug Century, author of Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse, studied hip-hop culture as he documented the lives of gang members; he predicts white acts will eventually dominate rap, just as white rockers pushed out rock's black forerunners. "It's possible that in 15 years...
...electronic beat box. Impressively, the Cardigans integrate these new elements seamlessly, brewing a series of the catchiest pop songs this side of Alanis Morissette; every track sounds as if it were designed to rule the airwaves. Unlike the beat-driven atmospherics of classic trip-hop bands like Portishead, the Cardigans fix their songs resolutely in potent hooks and lucid melodies. Even when the lyrics don't cut too deeply, you can't help humming along...
...their lack of originality. Admittedly, it does seem somewhat faddish and even artificial for them to embrace the trendy electronica sound after every other band and their mothers have already dressed up as techno gear-heads. Dusky distortions on tracks like "Marvel Hill" sound a lot like vintage Portishead and the guitar-driven "Starter" disturbingly suggests an even catchier Aimee Mann impersonation...
...Portishead Portishead (Go! Beat/London) Distorted, wraithlike vocals, blaring Big Band noir horns and deconstructed hip-hop beats--Portishead's eponymous album is both bravely strange and weirdly compelling. This is futuristic and cerebral music, but always heartfelt. The sound of the next millennium, today...
Bjork's voice, like Gibbons' on Portishead's CD, unifies and personalizes her album. Bjork shrieks and moans and hits strong, fresh notes, or does whatever is required to convey the emotions raging inside her. The seeming spontaneity of her performance is what's exciting. In the video for Joga, the first single from Homogenic, we see computer-generated images of landmasses, as if from a great height, and then Bjork herself, standing on a high hill, a gap in her chest exposing her swirling insides. The camera plunges within. In a future world of computer images, what still attracts...